In 2001, Bridgeport accused 800 record and music publishing companies of 500 counts of copyright infringement. The district court severed the action into 477 separate lawsuits, 106 of which were against Universal and its affiliates. Bridgeport offered to dismiss some of these cases with prejudice, but the defendants resisted, fearing they would lose their ability to recover attorney fees. They asked the court to dismiss the suits and order the plaintiffs to pay attorney fees. Instead, the district court ordered the parties to bear their own costs. The district court didn’t abuse its discretion with this ruling, the Cincinnati-based appeals court ruled.